What’s your Clause IV?

Just been re-reading parts of Tony Blair’s autobiography.

Love him or loathe him, he was an exceptionally skilled agent of change. Within his party at least.

Blair took a massive gamble early in his leadership on campaigning to abolish Clause IV, a redundant Labour credo dating back to 1917 which called, amongst other things, for “the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange” and was hence incompatible with any embrace of the free market.

In Blair’s words:

“It was largely symbolic. No one except the far left ever really believed in Clause IV as it was written. In a sense that was my point: no-one believed in it, yet no-one dared remove it. What this symbolised, therefore, was not just something redundant in our constitution, but a refusal to  confront reality, to change profoundly, to embrace the modern world wholeheartedly. In other words, this symbol mattered. It was a graven image, an idol. Breaking it would also change the psychology in the party that was damaging and reactionary and which was precisely what had kept us in Opposition for long periods.”

The gamble paid off and, as Blair writes, “the battle over Clause IV more or less set the scene for the style and content of leadership in the years up to 1997” (when he became PM).

So my thought for other leaders is this:

What’s your Clause IV?

What outdated practice or belief within your organisation has the potential to be both a real and a symbolic platform for change. And can you take a leaf out of Tony’s book to tackle it head on?